Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Some pretty impressive feedback from this kind of OT post on Sunday about Bill Millin, the D-Day bagpiper who has just passed on. Reader and subsciber "David" sent over the following and also kindly gave permission to share.

My father was the Pipe Major of the Clan McClay Bagpipe Band in Portland, Oregon until he died in 1974. Here the band is marching in the Rose Festival parade through downtown Portland around 1965. He was a B17 bomber pilot during the war from age 21 - 23. i was a piper from age 5 to 18. and studied piping briefly in Edinburgh where i was pursuing a degree in Philosophy - which lasted 3 months, at which time i took off for Asia, age 18.

I forwarded the story to my piper brother in Maine and he replied:

On Saturday I had a reed pop out of my chanter as we began to march onto a field and we were assaulted by hordes of midges, which landed on and died on our white shirts. Yet I kept on marching. Not quite the same as what Millin had to endure, I know.

My chanter reed is from 1965. When Dad was pipe major. I look at my reeds like single malt whiskey. They get better with age.

We all have had such interesting lives.

subsc. David In Thailand

Then when asked if I could share with a wider audience, David wrote:

it's an honor.

i used to play every tune mentioned in the article taught to young Davie by his dad on the back porch. His pipe band would practice every Tuesday evening in the field next to our house - in the summer i would climb high in the cherry tree and be in heaven.

david

People, this blog is a never-ending source of wonderful surprises to its author.

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Continental Gold Limited (the "Company" or "Continental Gold") (TSX:CNL), is pleased to announce that it has entered into a financing agreement pursuant to which a syndicate co-led by TD Securities Inc. and Clarus Securities Inc. (together, the "Underwriters"), has offered to purchase, on a bought deal private placement basis, 10,000,000 units (the "Units") of the Company at a price of $5.70 per Unit (the "Issue Price") for total gross proceeds of $57,000,000 (the "Offering"). Continental Gold has also granted the Underwriters an option to purchase up to an additional 2,000,000 Units, which is exercisable by the Underwriters at any time up to 2 business days prior to closing.

Each Unit will consist of one common share and one-half of one common share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant shall entitle the holder to acquire an additional common share at a price of $7.50 during the period ending 24 months following the closing of the Offering. In the event that the blah blah etc etc

IKN welcomes today's multiple visits from a company known as "Goodman & Co Investment Council".....now what on earth have they found interesting at IKN all of a sudden? :-)

Riverside Resources (RRI.v) up 13% at $0.87 and on a real zoom recently, probably due to the deals it's struck with Cliff's. Good to see nice guys winning, JMS.

Focus Ventures (FCV.v) up 4.4% at $0.47. Wabbit season!

Minera Andes (MAI.to) up a penny at $0.88. This humble scribe owns and is looking for a place to sell in order to rack up a short-term trading gain. Nicely in the green here but going to try and wait for 90c+ prices before ringing the register. DYODD, dude.

Continental Gold (CNL.to) up 4.5% at $5.80 and 'Son Of Colossus' is the Canuck trading desks' tennis ball du jour, with plenty of volume and opinion coming from this NR before the bell (the stock was halted on this yesterday, too). Some point to the knockout grades reported, others to the possible weakness of true vein width. Personally it's really easy to leave this stock alone and watch from the neutral corner, with neither the country nor the team making appeal.

Extorre (XG.to) up 5.5% at $3.87 and has been on an offensively good run recently. Yale knows how to push them buttons, doesn't he?

To give you an idea of the coverage we offer gold mining companies in The IKN Weekly, click here for a free download of the analysis on Oceanagold (OGC.to) (OGC.ax) found in IKN67 and dated August 15th (sorry, you don't get the full IKN Weekly newsletter, just the NOBS fundamental report from that issue).

At the time the stock was standing at $2.79, so it's done well in the two weeks since the report and added 21.8% to the price.

To make things a little more orderly, we're going to update on our regularly tracked basket of 10 silver tickers at the end of each month. Come December we'll have the winning winner, but until then here's how they stand in chart form.

(click to enlarge and make easier to read)

Leading the pack is still U.S. Silver (USA.v) (we applaud) but the biggest change we see on the list now is a more general one. Plenty of our small silver names have gone into the green on the year and are also beating out our benchmark silver ETF (SLV) ticker that tracks the metal itself accurately. So we now have the following five officially doing well in 2010:

So congratulations to that paragon of the mining community Mexico Mike Kachanovsky, as his paycheck providers at ECU aren't in last place any longer and have only lost their shareholders nine percent or so this year. It must make your unrelenting paid pumpage of this dog seem all worthwhile, Mikey.

Monday, August 30, 2010

After a little net-casting over today's news on dropped coverage of East Asia Minerals (EAS.v) by Dundee Securities and the capturing of views from several different reliable sources (i.e. ones that are trustworthy...a rare breed in Canuck mining but they still do exist), this humble scribe has been drawn to an inevitable conclusion. The backstory to today's terse droppage is that Dundee has done little more than throw a puerile hissyfit over EAS.v because those poor leeeetle multimillionaires that run the Dundee shop weren't cut in on the latest round of financing.

It seems that Dundee gives much more of a damn about its own in-house back pockets (along with its fragile and already overblown egos) than it does about the wellbeing of its clientele who should (in theory at least) get unbiased analysis of the mining sphere from said house but instead are perhaps only led into those companies that "play ball" with the suits in charge. So in this case, when EAS.v ruined their myopic moneygrabbing plans by cutting them out of the juicy financing, the bleeding hearts that cover EAS.v at Dundee felt all hurt about the lack of cash bungs EAS.v had thrown its way and thusly the poor little overentitled assholes took their toys and stomped off, exit stage left.

The douchebags in Canadian mining aren't confined to junior miner boardrooms, dudettes and dudes. Or in hockeytalk, Dundee can go fuck themselves. Disclosure; no position in EAS.v at all, no recos either way, but it sure is fun following the story for free.

Today is the annual commemoration of the tens of thousands of people that have been disappeared by oppressive governments over the years and around the world, though it shouldn't need much pointing out that Latin America as a region has suffered more than nearly anywhere else from this practice with the famous cases of Chile's Pinochet regime, Argentina's Dirty War standing alongside the lesser-reported cases of the thousands missing in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia and many other states.

IKN publishes below the UN Human Rights Office's statement on this occasion today, available at its origin here.

Statement by United Nations Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances

Geneva (30 August 2010) -- Today the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances commemorates the International Day of the Disappeared. All over the world, events have been organized by the families and associations of victims to remember those that have suffered the terrible fate of being disappeared. Yet, the Working Group believes that this day ought to be commemorated by all. It is gratified that the Human Rights Council has accepted the recommendation of the Working Group that 30 August be proclaimed the International Day of the Disappeared. The Working Group supports the call by the Human Rights Council for the United Nations General Assembly to recognize this day annually. This would put a further spotlight on these heinous acts.

Thirty years after the Working Group’s establishment, which will be commemorated at an event to take place in Geneva on 5 November this year, it condemns the fact that enforced disappearances continue to occur all over the world. The Working Group reiterates its solidarity with victims, their families and others who work on the issue. It pays tribute to the many relatives of victims, human rights defenders, non-governmental organizations, lawyers and other individuals and groups who work untiringly and often in difficult circumstances to denounce cases of enforced disappearance, discover the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared, and work to eradicate this terrible practice. It invites all Governments to support the efforts of those working on enforced disappearances and to take all available measures to protect them and others, including witnesses to these crimes.

To end the practice of enforced disappearances States should continue promoting and giving full effect to the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Defining enforced disappearance as a separate and autonomous criminal offence and bringing domestic legislation in conformity with the Declaration would significantly contribute to the prevention and eradication of this odious practice. The Working Group stands ready to assist states in their endeavors to give full effect to the Declaration.

The work of the Working Group is dependent on the cooperation of Governments. The role of states in investigating cases of enforced disappearances is essential to determining the fate or whereabouts of disappeared persons. The Working Group therefore calls upon Governments to fully cooperate with the Working Group and take all possible measures to address cases of enforced disappearances regardless of when the disappearance occurred, who the victims were or who the perpetrators are.

States should bring all those responsible for these crimes to justice; refrain from any act of intimidation or reprisals against those persons who contribute to the eradication of this crime; and fight impunity wherever it exists.

The Working Group is pleased to note that recently in a number of countries more has been done to investigate disappearances. It is also gratified that in various states there have been convictions for those who have perpetrated enforced disappearances and that in some cases reparations have been paid to victims or their families. More, however ought to be done to prosecute offenders, provide integral reparations to victims and family members, and to preserve memory.

The Working Group recalls that, as noted in its recently released General Comment on the Right to the Truth in Relation to Enforced Disappearances, the right to the truth entails the right to know about the progress and results of an investigation, the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared persons, the circumstances of the disappearance, and the identity of the perpetrator(s). The Working Group emphasizes that the right to the truth should be enjoyed by all the victims of enforced disappearances as well as others affected by enforced disappearances. Reconciliation between the State and victims of enforced disappearances and/or their families cannot happen without the clarification of each individual case.

The Working Group is gratified that, as of 30 August 2010, 83 States have signed and 19 States have ratified the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance. The ratification or accession of only one more State party is required before the Convention enters into force. The implementation of the Convention, and the coming into being of the Committee on Enforced Disappearance, will strengthen States’ capacities to reduce the number of disappearances and will help realize the demands of victims and their families for justice and truth. The Working Group urges States that have not yet signed and/or ratified the Convention to do so as soon as possible. It also calls upon States to accept the competence of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances to receive and consider communications from or on behalf of individuals under article 31 and the inter-State complaint mechanism under article 32 of the Convention.

Here's an intruiging one. Dundee Securities today decided to drop East Asia Minerals (EAS.v) from its coverage list. Ok fair enough and a call is a call, but it's the way it was done that raises eyebrows.

We are dropping coverage of East Asia Minerals Corp. (EAS-V), effective immediately our ratings, target prices and estimates should no longer be relied upon. Readers should no longer rely on the comments or recommendations made in respect of the company as no assurance can be given as to the accuracy or relevance going forward.

xxxxxxxxxxx

IKN back. File that under "terse", also kinda mysterious, as what you see above was the whole message (bar the normal disclosure blurbs, of course). Betcha Ron and Robert are getting plenty of phone calls this morning, too. Anyone know any backstory to this? TIA. Finally by way of disclosure, no position in EAS.v. Even though we recently covered the company's ding-dong with Northern Miner this author has no dog running in this game.

Although not a member of the 'Stockhouse Community' myself, I was forwarded this mail pasted below from the Stockhouse people by A.Reader this morning. The interesting bit has been highlighted by your humble scribe in red

AN UPDATE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear Valued Stockhouse Member,

I want to personally let you know of some exciting changes coming soon to Stockhouse.

New Editorial:

We will soon be launching two new editorial columns; a "short" report showing you some of the market's biggest scams and overvalued stocks as well as a weekly Q&A with some of the industry's biggest movers and shakers. This will be sent to you weekly via email.

Website Redevelopment:

We are planning a redevelopment of stockhouse.com and we would love your feedback! What do like or dislike about the website? What changes or features would you like to see? Let us know - now is your chance to have your say!

Updates on what is happening at Stockhouse

Expect to receive future updates from me periodically. I want to keep each of you informed of what's going on at Stockhouse.

Thank you very much for your continued support of Stockhouse. Please send me any comments or feedback.

Sincerely, Marcus

Marcus NewPresidentStockhouse Publishing Ltd.

Or in other words, Stockhouse has just sent a very big advertising message to all the scammy mining juniors and scumball management teams hanging in Canada (and let's face it, there are hundreds of those):

Dear Scumballs,

You have exactly one week to get yourself signed up as a sponsor of Stockhouse and sent us money every month else risk being exposed for what you are. However, if you sponsor Stockhouse your far less likely to get any spotlights shone upon you.......(ahem, cough, ahem).

Air kisses, Marcus New

Smart marketing technique, Marcus. IKN applauds your inverse scumbaggery and bets that Agoracom is kicking itself right now for not having thought of it first. Hey, I wonder if Thom "Never Met A Junior I Didn't Like" Calandra will be in charge of the 'short report'?

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - 08/30/10) - Fronteer Gold Inc. ("Fronteer Gold") (TSX:FRG - News)(AMEX:FRG - News) and AuEx Ventures, Inc. ("AuEx") (TSX:XAU - News) announced today they have entered into an arrangement agreement under which Fronteer Gold will acquire 100% of the outstanding common shares of AuEx by way of a plan of arrangement.

Under the plan of arrangement, AuEx shareholders will receive 0.645 of a Fronteer Gold share, $0.66 in cash and 0.5 of a share in a new exploration company ("SpinCo") for each AuEx share. Excluding the SpinCo shares, the offer represents a premium of approximately 50.9% based on the volume-weighted average prices of AuEx and Fronteer Gold shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") for the 20 trading days ended on August 26, 2010, resulting in a fully diluted equity value for the transaction of $280.8 million. continues here

The similaritiesBoth these murders are heinous crimes. Both are despicable. Both are politically charged and come with a background of sleaze, both point to weaknesses in the countries where they happened.

(Aug. 30) -- The Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, known for drug-related violence, saw more bloodshed when the mayor of Hidalgo was shot dead by suspected cartel hitme

The killing of Mayor Marco Antonio Leal Garcia, 46, on Sunday comes just a few days after a wave of car bombs were set off in the state capital and less than a week after the bullet-ridden corpses of 72 migrants were found at a ranch near the U.S. border. Experts suspect that the Zetas -- a bloodthirsty drug gang formed by former Mexican army commandos, and dubbed the most "sophisticated and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico" by the U.S. government -- are behind many of the crimes.

Leal was driving through his rural municipality at 4:30 p.m. Sunday when CONTINUES HERE

Here's how one of the only two stories on the Colombia murder available in English kicks off:

Colombian human rights defender Norma Irene Perez, who was involved in investigating allegations of a mass grave in La Macarena, was found shot to death, according to a Bogota-based NGO.

The Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CPDH) announced in a press release that Perez was found dead with multiple bullet wounds in the rural municipality of La Union, close to La Macarena in the Meta department, on August 13. Perez, a mother of four, went missing on August 7.

La Macarena mayor's office claims Perez died after stepping on a land mine and was not murdered.

Perez was a member of the Upper Guayabero Regional Committee for Human Rights. She was among rights workers who in July agitated for an investigation into allegations of 2,000 unidentified bodies in a La Macarena graveyard.CONTINUES HERE

...this table, taken from this Clarín report that shows the YoY price rises of staples in Rosario Argentina (the country's 2nd biggest city and a pretty good barometer).

click to enlarge

You'll also note the nice clear photos and so it's a good time to brush up on your Spanish vocab, folks (e.g. onion pron: "Se Boy Ya").

The main point of the Clarín article is to note how all these foodstuffs are no longer included in the Argentine gov't inflation statistics compiled by the bullshitters at INDEC, because according to the official stats people these products became "superfluous" in 2008. Convenient, no?

Your author makes no apology whatsoever in reprinting every single word in this Economist article. If just one extra person reads the words on offer it would have been worth the copyright risk.

Piping in D-Day

Bill Millin, piper at the D-Day landings, died on August 17th, aged 88

Aug 26th 2010

ANY reasonable observer might have thought Bill Millin was unarmed as he jumped off the landing ramp at Sword Beach, in Normandy, on June 6th 1944. Unlike his colleagues, the pale 21-year-old held no rifle in his hands. Of course, in full Highland rig as he was, he had his trusty skean dhu, his little dirk, tucked in his right sock. But that was soon under three feet of water as he waded ashore, a weary soldier still smelling his own vomit from a night in a close boat on a choppy sea, and whose kilt in the freezing water was floating prettily round him like a ballerina’s skirt.

But Mr Millin was not unarmed; far from it. He held his pipes, high over his head at first to keep them from the wet (for while whisky was said to be good for the bag, salt water wasn’t), then cradled in his arms to play. And bagpipes, by long tradition, counted as instruments of war. An English judge had said so after the Scots’ great defeat at Culloden in 1746; a piper was a fighter like the rest, and his music was his weapon. The whining skirl of the pipes had struck dread into the Germans on the Somme, who had called the kilted pipers “Ladies from Hell”. And it raised the hearts and minds of the home side, so much so that when Mr Millin played on June 5th, as the troops left for France past the Isle of Wight and he was standing on the bowsprit just about keeping his balance above the waves getting rougher, the wild cheers of the crowd drowned out the sound of his pipes even to himself.

His playing had been planned as part of the operation. On commando training near Fort William he had struck up a friendship with Lord Lovat, the officer in charge of the 1st Special Service Brigade. Not that they had much in common. Mr Millin was short, with a broad cheeky face, the son of a Glasgow policeman; his sharpest childhood memory was of being one of the “poor”, sleeping on deck, on the family’s return in 1925 from Canada to Scotland. Lovat was tall, lanky, outrageously handsome and romantic, with a castle towering above the river at Beauly, near Inverness. He had asked Mr Millin to be his personal piper: not a feudal but a military arrangement. The War Office in London now forbade pipers to play in battle, but Mr Millin and Lord Lovat, as Scots, plotted rebellion. In this “greatest invasion in history”, Lovat wanted pipes to lead the way.

He was ordering now, as they waded up Sword Beach, in that drawly voice of his: “Give us a tune, piper.” Mr Millin thought him a mad bastard. The man beside him, on the point of jumping off, had taken a bullet in the face and gone under. But there was Lovat, strolling through fire quite calmly in his aristocratic way, allegedly wearing a monogrammed white pullover under his jacket and carrying an ancient Winchester rifle, so if he was mad Mr Millin thought he might as well be ridiculous too, and struck up “Hielan’ Laddie”. Lovat approved it with a thumbs-up, and asked for “The Road to the Isles”. Mr Millin inquired, half-joking, whether he should walk up and down in the traditional way of pipers. “Oh, yes. That would be lovely.”

Three times therefore he walked up and down at the edge of the sea. He remembered the sand shaking under his feet from mortar fire and the dead bodies rolling in the surf, against his legs. For the rest of the day, whenever required, he played. He piped the advancing troops along the raised road by the Caen canal, seeing the flashes from the rifle of a sniper about 100 yards ahead, noticing only after a minute or so that everyone behind him had hit the deck in the dust. When Lovat had dispatched the sniper, he struck up again. He led the company down the main street of Bénouville playing “Blue Bonnets over the Border”, refusing to run when the commander of 6 Commando urged him to; pipers walked as they played.

He took them across two bridges, one (later renamed the Pegasus Bridge) ringing and banging as shrapnel hit the metal sides, one merely with railings which bullets whistled through: “the longest bridge I ever piped across.” Those two crossings marked their successful rendezvous with the troops who had preceded them. All the way, he learned later, German snipers had had him in their sights but, out of pity for this madman, had not fired. That was their story. Mr Millin himself knew he wasn’t going to die. Piping was too enjoyable, as he had discovered in the Boys’ Brigade band and all through his short army career. And piping protected him.

The Nut-Brown Maiden

The pipes themselves were less lucky, injured by shrapnel as he dived into a ditch. He could still play them, but four days later they took a direct hit on the chanter and the drone when he had laid them down in the grass, and that was that. The last tune they had piped on D-Day was “The Nut-Brown Maiden”, played for a small red-haired French girl who, with her folks cowering behind her, had asked him for music as he passed their farm.

He gave the pipes later to the museum at the Pegasus Bridge, which he often revisited, and sometimes piped across, during his long and quiet post-war career as a mental nurse at Dawlish in Devon. On one such visit, in full Highland rig with his pipes in his arms, he was approached by a smartly dressed woman of a certain age, with faded red hair, who planted a joyous kiss of remembrance on his cheek.

Hmmmmmmm....well, gotta be said it hasn't had the best of times recently.

On August 18th 2010, IKN ran this post entitled (all subtle like) "Gold American Mining (SILA.ob) is a scam" and laid it out just like it is. So let's see just how the stock has done in the seven trading days since then:

Wowsers, 32.3% down in such a short space of time! Waddya say, owly?

You see IKN really is a disgrace to the mining community, but only that part of the mining community that gets rich off suckers. Add John Myers to the Mexico Mike rollcall, dudettes and dudes.....and for Pete's sake DYODD out there...... and CUE THE MUSIC!

IKN69 has just been sent out to subscribers. Plenty of photos this week, taken while out roadtripping and visiting the main projects of two very interesting companies. Hope you enjoy this week's issue, guys.

This week's free offer comes from the prestigious Aberdeen Group. Normally 400 bucks' worth of reading material, IKN gets to offer it to you, dearest kindest reader, for free. All you need to do is click through, fill in the very simple form and all this knowledge comes to you gratis. No better deal on the interwebnetpipes, for sure, so get wise about spend analysis today.

Spend analysis has gradually become the top process in the procurement executive's toolbox, placing itself in the top-tier of functionalities alongside e-sourcing, e-procurement and strategic sourcing solutions. Aberdeen research over the last half-decade has chronicled the rise of spend analysis and its true value within the procurement organization. Spend analysis, and the resulting intelligence gleaned from a deep-dive view into corporate spend data, has enabled sourcing groups to uncover opportunities for savings and has given the CFO a strategic advantage by utilizing this information for future forecasting and budgeting.

Which is good news as far as I'm concerned (and my call all year, even when she was supposedly lagging behind Serra). Al Jazz has got the extended story and analysis and it's well worth clicking through for more but here's the chart that AJ is running with its story, one of those pictures that paints a thousand words.

During last week's roadtrip, your humble scribe saw and snapped this view.

(click to enlarge)

Everlasting fame and kudos awaits the first person who names the place in the shot. G'luck!

UPDATE: Reader 'ADB' wins that everlasting fame and kudos by correctly naming not only the mine but the hill stuck on the horizon, too: ADB writes:

Hi Otto,

The picture in your blog is of Cerro Chullpahuanca at Barrick Gold's Lagunas Norte mine.

cheers

Indeed it's true. Lagunas Norte, also known as 'Alto Chicama', is Barrick's (ABX) major gold operation in Peru and the country's second largest gold mine (behind Yanacocha). For those with their wonk on this afternoon, here are the monthly production figures for the mine:

If the average is around 2.5m grams of gold per month, that's about 80,000 ounces in old money and all at a normally very profitable cash cost, too. Not shabby.

So you think the BP (BP) Gulf of Mexico story is all done and dusted? Think again and read on as industry expert Alan von Altendorf guest-posts on IKN and talks about things that BP would rather you didn't hear. Enjoy.

guest post by Alan von Altendorf

ENOUGH WITH THE BP BULLSHIT

I have followed the Macondo intervention for more than four months. Immediately after the blowout on April 20, BP denied responsibility and blamed Transocean. BP denied there was any oil leaking, then admitted a paltry 1000 bpd, then well okay maybe 5000 bpd, tops.

None of this was true. The well was spewing 50,000 bpd and we watched BP attempt cofferdams, junk shots, top hats and a giant scissors that mangled the riser so badly that it had to be unbolted and removed. Best estimate of the leaked oil to date is 5 million barrels, of which less than 1 million barrels were captured by BP's various Rube Goldberg contraptions and flared into the atmosphere.

All of this may have been understandable and forgiveable. BP was completely unprepared to deal with a blowout in 5000 feet of water. They launched a fleet of Remotely Operated Vehicles from a crowded "city of ships" and started two relief wells under the supervision of famed wild well expert John Wright.

And then? - suddenly the relief wells were halted at few feet from their target. BP capped the well from above with a new 3-ram stack and decided to pump mud and cement down from the top.

That brings us to the situation at present. During the past six weeks, nothing has been advanced. BP claims that the reservoir is plugged with cement and the BOP was displaced to seawater.

Bullshit. They've been pumping mud, antifreeze, methanol, and some kind of purple Drano. The top stack was inoperable at normal pressure. There are three broken drill pipes jammed in the BOP, one of which is 3000 feet long. Zero progress has been made in "fishing" them out.

The seafloor is cracked and spewing take your pick -- a billion amphipod crustaceans that didn't exist last month, or whatever BP is pumping down the well daily -- brown mud, methylene blue leak discloser, green antifreeze, 100% straight white methanol -- or oil and gas.

If it weren't for a Congressional order, we wouldn't have any ROV video feeds at all. But that hasn't stopped BP from blacking out certain shots and swapping feeds to keep us in the dark. Here's a collection of stills that were grabbed during the past couple days. A downhole camera showed us oil and chunks of cement floating up. The surface of the sea has been turned green. There's a big plume of brown mud, like a mile wide liquid donut of dirty bathwater surrounding eerily deep blue Macondo well ops.

Just wait until they detach the BOP from the wellhead. You ain't seen nothin' yet.